Do you have a favourite colour?

Many individual have strong preferences for specific colours, however understanding why and what these colours mean is critically important when designing for a specific audience.

Colours and their meanings

Colours have hidden meanings. For example, blue is the colour from sky and water and is most often associated with a business, as it is perceived to be a calming, reliable colour. Green is the most common colour in nature and we perceive this colour to be the second ‘favourite colour’. It often provides a backdrop colour for design, and this is often used when an image of ‘natural goodness’ or sustainability is to be suggested. Every colour has a very specific physiological meaning and it is certainly important to understand the underlying meaning.

Don’t miss a design trick

A good designer will be able to advise you on the meaning of colour and should produce design with this in mind. Every aspect of design carries a deep-rooted physiological response; if you do not consider these within the design process, you are missing a trick!

Getting hung on a colour

The worst thing you can do is to start the design process with a specific colour as a prerequisite for the design. Many companies have corporate colours, which are fine as long as they have been well thought out, and this should be clearly understood.

Just remember

It’s worth considering that not all colours are perceived the same across each culture. It’s a classic one but in the west, black is the colour most often associated with death, however, in Japan it’s white. If you are developing a brand that has an international reach, remember to think how the colour is going to be received in all markets!

I was delighted this week to be invited to judge a creative writing contest at Oakfield Primary School in Rugby.

Mrs Walsh’s class of 9 year olds had to design a poster advertising fictitious chocolate – ‘Cocoas’.

Not only had everyone created great looking posters, I was amazed to discover that even at this early age, kids already had a good grasp of some of the techniques that people like us use to help sell product.

The Contest

Although it was tough judging, the 3 best were :

1st Place – Emily

Cocoas - 1st Place

We chose this as the overall winner because we felt is had a good headline, a good promotional offer and a great description of the actual bar itself.

2nd Place – Brandon & Adam

Cocoas - 2nd Place

This entry came 2nd because we liked the idea of ‘cheeky little cocoas in their beds’ – it was fun and conjured up a great image of the product.

3rd Place – Brandon

Cocoas - 3rd Place

We liked this one because of the strapline – “The cream of your dreamzzzz’

Well done to you all!

What’s it like working in advertising?

In addition to judging the contest, I gave a brief insight into what working in an advertising agency was like.

Eager to know what happens at Cloud 9, Questions included:

• Do you do all the adverts on the TV?
• Did I have to go to university to work in advertising?
• If you make posters, do you have to put them all up?
• What is the best advert we’ve ever created?
• How much do you get paid?

All the kids seemed really interested – who knows? maybe the next Ogilvy or Saatchi will come from Rugby!

We’ve made it much easier to personalise your email campaigns with regular content tags such as ‘First name’ and ‘Email’. But with this update, you can now also add custom fields from your subscriber list’ and lots of variations of today’s date. The former should be especially useful if you’re planning to personalise your email with nice details such as the subscriber’s location, interests or even a message like, “We’re glad you were referred to us via a friend, please let everyone know about our store, too!” (where ‘a friend’ is the value in a ‘Referrers’ custom field):

We made it really easy to add quick links such as ‘Forward to a Friend’ and ‘Unsubscribe’ via the editor – they’re all available via a drop-down menu. In addition, we’ve given you more control over colors and formatting via the toolbar:

You can resize your editor window, too:

It’s been a big week for email templates and the WYSIWYG editor in general. Let us know what you think of the updates – we hope it makes working with email templates a much easier and more time-efficient task.

What is an open rate?

Open rate is a measure of how many people on an email list open (or view) a particular email campaign. The open rate is normally expressed as a percentage, and at Cloud 9 we calculate it as follows:

So a 20% open rate would mean that of every 10 emails delivered to the inbox, 2 were actually opened.

How do you measure an open?

When each email is sent out, we automatically add a piece of code that requests a tiny, invisible image from our web servers. So when a reader opens the email, the image is downloaded, and we can record that download as an open for that specific email.

It is important to understand that the open rate is not a 100% accurate measure. Recording an ‘open’ can only happen if the readers email client is capable of displaying html with images, and that option is turned on. So if you are sending text-only emails, there is no way to record open rates (the exception is if they actually click a link). Similarly, people reading your html email without images showing will not be recorded as opens.

Another issue is that your readers may have a preview pane in their email client. That preview pane might be displaying your email automatically (and therefore downloading the images) without the reader ever having to click on it or read it.

So you should never take your open rate as a hard and fast number, because you can never know the true figure. It is much better used as general guide, and as a way of measuring the trends on your email campaigns.

What is a typical open rate?

Really, there is no typical open rate. The rate obtained for any list, or group of lists will depend on how it was measured, when it was sent, the size of the list and a zillion other potential variables. There is no shortage of benchmark numbers out there, but even between benchmark figures you will find big variation in the reported open rates.

So instead of giving a specific percentage, we’ve come up with the following chart.

There are certainly some broad trends in open rates.

As list size goes up, the open rate tends to fall; possibly because smaller companies are more likely to have personal relationships with their list subscribers.

Companies and organizations that are focusing on enthusiasts and supporters, like churches, sport teams and non profits see higher open rates

More specific niche topics, like some manufacturing areas also typically have higher open rates than emails on broader topics

Why don’t you just give me a number!

So what if you just have no idea of what is a reasonable open rate? Based on everything we have seen here at Cloud 9, and on the other research out there, the bottom line is this:

If you are getting an open rate between 20% and 40%, you are probably somewhere around average.

Very few lists of reasonable size are getting much above 50% open rates from normal campaigns. Your list may have some specific factors that give you higher rates; if so, well done.

However, don’t expect to be getting 80% open rates. People are too busy, inboxes are too full and the measurements are technically limited. If, after all that, you are still interested in seeing specific figures, talk to us for help.

How can I increase my open rate?

There are a ton of elements you can vary to try to entice more of your subscribers to open up your emails. Here are just a few things you could try:

Experiment with your subject lines: Try including details about the content of the email right in the subject line, instead of using your standard subject.

Send on a different day: Are your subscribers too busy on a Wednesday morning to read your email, leaving it languishing down the inbox? Maybe a Friday afternoon email would be welcomed.

Get the important content up the top: Remember that many people will see a preview of your email before deciding to open it or ignore it. Make sure your email is recognizable, and that your key points are in the top third.

The typical open rates in the chart above were derived from Cloud 9’s own figures.

Well here it is – Christmas day 2009!

At first glance it looks as though Mike has nothing better to do on Christmas day than blog , but I’m cheating (actually like most people on Christmas day, I’m probably well oiled and feeling stuffed from eating too much).
For the geeks amongst you, I setup our CMS to publish an entry automatically at a pre-determined time and date.

It’s been a tough year all round but there appears to be a good vibe about business picking up next year. Although I’m sure we’re not out of the woods just yet, those customers who have continued to push on with their marketing efforts throughout 2009 appear to have seen a real benefit. With their brands now at the fore, I’m sure this will really slingshot them when the market picks up again.

Anyway – back to the frivolities. On behalf of us all at Cloud 9, I would like to thank all our great customers, suppliers and friends for making 2009 such a success – we look forward to working with you all again in 2010!

We’re back in on 4th January.

Regards

Mike

How close were we??!

On Wednesday 25th November I went to the Albert Hall to watch a mammoth 3 hour set by Snow Patrol. Firstly: what a venue – such an awesome place and made even better by our seats 3 rows from the front!  It was a simple set, but it worked. Gary was incredibly charismatic and  he completely engaged with the crowd. And what a voice – in the words of Strictly’s CRH - AMAZING!

This annual transatlantic rally starting each November in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has now become the most popular way to cross the Atlantic. The largest transocean sailing event in the world, every year the ARC brings together over 200 yachts from all over the world. The Caribbean destination is Rodney Bay in St.Lucia, one of the most beautiful islands in the Lesser Antilles. The 2700 nautical mile passage on the NE tradewind route takes on average between 14 and 21 days.

At the moment they are 2nd in their group, the crew are keeping a daily blog which you can view here: www.sperrey.com

The Lamborghini Balboni…………. a girl can dream

Lamborgini Balboni - Clare's dream Car!

Check out the Top Gear writeup here

or see the gallery here

We will however have backup power running, but if for any reason you are unable to contact us via telephone, please try emailing us instead.

info[at]c9dd.com

Thanks

Ash is obviously brimming full of web type geekery but it does spread over to me on the Design & Print side of things here at Cloud 9 too.

I’m Simon and this is the first part of my ‘Print Geek Talk’ posts.
I could have included all things technical to this post but I wouldn’t want you to be all geeked out straight away!

The aim of these posts is to give you understanding of those jabbery words we use without even thinking about it, that you might well wonder what we are actually going on about!

So keep your eyes peeled for more Geek related posts.